By Christopher Alessi
HAMBURG--The German company that armed generations of German
military leaders, including Kaiser Wilhelm and Hitler, is adapting
for the 21st century.
The shipbuilding arm of steel giant ThyssenKrupp AG on Thursday
christened the second of four cutting-edge warships that it is
building for the German navy for a total of roughly EUR2 billion
($2.2 billion).
The event was celebrated at the Blohm & Voss shipyard here
with patriotic fanfare that included a marching band, naval
officers, and a host of political and business leaders. It
represented a rare bright spot for the country's beleaguered
defense industry, which has been squeezed by stricter government
controls over arms exports and weaker demand in Europe.
Arms makers such as Rheinmetall AG, for example, had sharply
weaker results in 2014 because of a government crackdown on exports
of munitions and armored vehicles to countries with dubious
human-rights records.
ThyssenKrupp, a world leader in advanced submarine technology,
has been spared, however. In fact, shifting political winds and
Germany's aging naval equipment could work in its favor, analysts
say.
With a resurgent Russia on Europe's doorstep, Germany has been
reconsidering its long-held resistance to increasing military
spending. The German cabinet last month adopted a draft budget for
2016 that would raise the Defense Ministry's budget to EUR34.2
billion from EUR33 billion this year and committed to spend EUR35
billion by 2019.
Another factor in the increase may have been a parliamentary
report leaked last year, and later confirmed by German defense
officials, that disclosed that at most seven of the navy's 43
helicopters were in shape to fly and only one of its four
submarines was operational, in part because of limited money for
upgrades.
ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems is leading a consortium that
includes shipbuilder Fr. Lürssen Werft GmbH to develop the new
class of naval vessel, known as the F125 frigate. Experts say the
new ships--first ordered in 2007 and slated to enter service by
2017--are much more versatile than the eight Cold War-era
forerunners they are replacing.
The frigates have been produced amid a painful restructuring at
the Marine Systems division that included the integration of two
other shipyards, including Blohm & Voss, the elimination of
approximately 6,000 jobs and last summer's sale of the division's
Swedish operations to Saab AB.
"We're doing the same [revenue] and a higher workload with fewer
people, " said Hans Christoph Atzpodien, the head of ThyssenKrupp's
Industrial Solutions business, which houses Marine Systems. The
division, which employs 3,000 workers, posted sales of EUR1.74
billion for its 2014 fiscal year, ended Sept. 30.
At 490 feet long and 7,000 tons, the new frigates will be
Germany's largest combat ships.
Outfitted with a large central gun that can hit targets far
inland, the F125s "are optimized to address post-Cold War security
needs, and the post-9/11 terrorism environment," said Sebastian
Bruns, a research fellow at Germany's Institute for Security Policy
at Kiel University.
Unlike any of the German navy's current frigates, the new ships
would be able to "actively go after pirates" in the Indian Ocean,
said Mr. Bruns. The German navy is currently participating in two
European Union maritime-security missions off the Horn of
Africa.
The F125 was designed to allow the navy to engage in more
international humanitarian missions and counterterrorism
operations, said Ingo Gädechens, chairman of the conservative
Christian Democratic Union's bloc on the German parliamentary
defense committee.
Other navies have sought to develop even more adaptable frigates
that can respond to a wider array of threats. Denmark recently
introduced frigates with anti-air, anti-submarine, and anti-ship
missiles.
The U.S. is decommissioning older frigates and wants to add a
"multimission" version like the Danish ship, said Eric Wertheim, an
analyst at the U.S. Navy Institute.
Germany's F125s will carry just one short-range defensive
missiles, Mr. Wertheim said.
While the F125 lacks some of the submarine-hunting and
anti-aircraft capabilities of its Cold War predecessors, it boasts
significant engineering advances.
It is designed to require little maintenance, and its hybrid
propulsion system could let it operate for as long as two years
without returning to port, compared with nine months for the F124
version.
"No current frigate is able to do this," said Hojo Lippke, a
former researcher at the University of the German Armed Forces in
Munich and former lobbyist for ThyssenKrupp.
"If German industry can make this happen it will [bring about] a
completely new generation of shipbuilding," he said.
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